


Click

by donutsandcoffee



Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter RPF
Genre: (actually multiple alternate universes), Alternate Universe, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-18
Updated: 2014-01-18
Packaged: 2018-01-08 23:41:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,944
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1138843
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/donutsandcoffee/pseuds/donutsandcoffee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Snapshots of what could have been. Some things just don’t change—especially the ones that matter.</p><p>(Childhood best friends, medical students, magazine writers, photographers, politicans, and, ultimately, Michael and Gavin. Always.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Click

**Author's Note:**

> for the prompt: alternate universes. it’s in plural form—alternate universes—so here goes some aus and not-so-aus. feel free if any of you wants to expand on any of the universes portrayed here
> 
> also posted on [tumblr](http://deqncas.tumblr.com/post/65371137258/click)

 

“That was stupid,” Michael says, sandwiching the words in between large bites of the chocolate donut his mom bought for him this morning. “The way you stood up to those bullies.”

Gavin looks up from his book. “Was it?”

“Yeah it was.”

Gavin pouts, and Michael thinks it’s cute. Michael thinks a lot of things Gavin does are cute. Other kids say they’re weird, the way Gavin’s straw-like hair and his big nose and his voice when he says certain words are weird, but Michael thinks it’s just how Gavin is  _Gavin,_  and other kids are stupid, anyways.

Michael plops down to sit beside Gavin and stretches, back digging into the tree bark. They have five more minutes until their recess ends. “But it was, like, super awesome too.”

This time Gavin grins, all teeth and no reservations, and Michael loves him a little.

 

 

+

“Michael,  _Michael_. I have another one,” Gavin says, jumping to sit at the counter table excitedly like it isn’t four in the morning and they haven’t been awake for twenty-seven hours straight. “Hear me out.” 

“Jesus fuck, Gavin,  _no_ ,” Michael says, because unlike Gavin, he feels like he’s going to drop dead any minute now, and fuck his entire life if this is the last thing he hears before he dies. He swivels his chair and turns his back at Gavin.

“But Michael—“

“ _No_ ,” he snaps, and checks his watch for the umpteenth time. He is  _dying_ , and he still has three more hours until their shift ends, another lecture on environmental biochemistry at eight, and two more papers due tomorrow. 

Such is the life of a medical student.

But despite his complaints and sufferings he  _does_  want this, wants to graduate in time and save people’s lives and all that shit, and if he has to survive another three hours of Gavin for that, he  _will_ , by sheer power of will. 

He doesn’t actually mind Gavin that much, too, not that he would ever admit that in a thousand years. He’s falling asleep here, and there’s nothing more dangerous than a sleeping staff in the emergency unit. A five-minute snooze might mean a loss of a life, and Gavin, thankfully, keeps him awake. 

There haven’t been any emergency calls so far, though, and there’s five minutes of blessed silence before he realizes Gavin has been staring at the back of his head. He turns and opens his mouth to protest, but Gavin has already said, “I wish I was your coronary artery—“

“— _Jesus Christ—_ “ 

“—so  that I could be wrapped around your heart.”

Michael glares at him. “How  _many_  exactly of these fucking puns and pickup lines you have?” He asks, and immediately regrets his question.

Gavin laughs, voice echoing through the empty hallways of the hospital, and says, “enough to keep us entertained until the shift ends,” and, “oh, I have another one _—”_

Michael groans, and is secretly grateful.

 

+

Leo—  _July 23 to August 22_

_Unfortunately, the stars are not your friends today. You may want to avoid eating more than three and a half cookies today, as it will upset your stomach._

“Ryan, that is oddly specific.”

Ryan raises his eyebrow in the way that would look ridiculous on anyone else’s faces but simply looks deep and intimidating on Ryan’s. Gavin feels a chill run down his spine when Ryan says, “is it, though?  _Is it_?”

“I,” Gavin manages to fumble, and Ryan barks a laugh that can surely be classified under ‘evil’. Gavin considers taking a picture of him and asking Barbara to use this picture when she publishes her column about evil geniuses next week.

“Gavin, you  _moron_ ,” someone suddenly shouts from across the cubicle, and Gavin doesn’t need to look up to see that it’s Michael, the resident’s opinion column writer.

“What?” He asks.

“Are you going for lunch or not? I’ve been standing here for twenty years waiting for your sorry ass.”

“Yeah, give me a second,” He says, grabbing the packet of cookies he’s been planning to share with Michael, and hesitates when he remembers Ryan’s zodiac column. Not that he believes in zodiac, but.  _Ryan_.

He decides to take a glimpse of his zodiac from Ryan’s desk.

Gemini—  _May 22 to June 21_

_Stop making less-than-intelligent choices; you may not shoulder the consequences, but someone has to. These people may be your friends._

“Gavin! I’m leaving now!”

“Wait up!” He says, and leaves his packet of cookies on the table. 

 

+

Everyone in this place is a liar and is not ashamed of it; fake smiles full of fake promises, fake compliments to begin fake friendships, fake fake  _fake_  and Michael is sick of it.

It’s to be expected, of course, from a networking event filled with politicians; after five years being part of the political scene, Michael is more than familiar with it. Doesn’t mean he stops getting bored of it.

The fact that they are  _fishing_  doesn’t help to improve the situation.

The air is warm and the water is calm; there’s hardly wind today as the snow has fully melted and the nature fully embraces the idea of  _spring_. There’s a lull in his conversation with Mr. Fucking Uninteresting who sits beside him, and Michael feels his eyelids getting heavier, his head dropping—

“FFFFFIIIIIIIIIISHHHHHHHHHH!!!!”

Michael  _jumps_ in his seat, and so do a couple of people. All heads immediately turn to the owner of the voice, a young spiky-haired delegate from Britain who is currently struggling to lift the large fish he just caught. 

The fish flops wildly in his arms before hitting the delegate on the face with its tail and jumps back into the sea. Everyone bursts into laughter as they witness the scene, and the British delegate gives them a shit-eating grin. 

 _What an idiot_ , Michael thinks, and walks up to him to introduce himself.

He doesn’t need more connections from Britain, but he definitely doesn’t mind a real friendship.

 

+

“ARE YOU A FUCKING  _IDIOT,_ ” Michael shouts as he goes down from his car, “Who the  _fuck_  cross the street like that? I almost fucking ran over you.  _Again._ ”

Michael thinks he almost had a heart attack—running over the same person he almost ran over  _last week_  may look like planned homicide in the court, and he doesn’t plan to get arrested for first-degree murder, fuck you very much—but his ‘victim’ doesn’t wear the expression of a man who almost got run over by a car. 

In fact, the man is  _smiling widely_ , grabbing him by the hand and shaking it as he says, “thank  _God_ , I’m Gavin.”

“I’m Michael,” he says automatically, and starts. His complaints die in his lips, replaced by, “wait, what, why are you—“

“It’s a very funny story, you see,” The man— _Gavin_ —explains, “last week I was in shock, almost getting hit by a car and all. I couldn’t really form any sentences, but when I went home I actually thought,  _the guy who ran over me was pretty attractive_.” 

Michael’s brain immediately stops working.

“I didn’t get your name, so I figured, I could, I could just walk past the same road until you use it again,” he continues. “It’s been a week and I was giving up. I thought I wouldn’t see you again, so when I saw your car drove past, I was so excited and I couldn’t find a way to stop you so I…” 

“So you threw yourself in front of my car and almost killed yourself,” Michael finishes his sentence.

Gavin at least has the audacity to duck his head and look sheepish, though he’s still somewhat smiling.

He still doesn’t let go of Michael’s hand.

“That was,” Gavin says after a minute of stunned silence, “that  _may_  have been pretty reckless.”

 “You’re a fucking  _moron_ ,” Michael says, and Gavin’s face falls. Before Gavin can retract his hand from their weird handshake, though, Michael  _squeezes_  and pulls.

“Michael?” Gavin asks as Michael guides him to his car and Michael feels his face heat up when he says, “What are you fucking waiting, then? Are we getting a drink or not?”

Gavin’s face breaks into a smile.

“If you turn out to be boring, I’m running you over with my car,” Michael says, and they both know he doesn’t mean it.

 

+

“You’re a good photographer, you really  _are_ , Gavin—“

“Thanks Geoff—“

“—and I know this ever since I hired you months ago, when you just got here and barely knew your ways around this place, almost getting yourself into trouble and putting  _your own name_  on our newspaper’s headline with that cat and pirate costume—“

“—it was that  _one_  time—“

“But  _why_ ,” a pause. “ _Why_ can’t I have a single picture of the presidential candidate?”

As if to get his point across even further, Geoff drops a thick stack of pictures on Gavin’s desk. “In this stack,” he says, “there isn’t a  _single_  picture of candidate Narvaez and we’re expected to run the story tomorrow!”

“There must be  _one_  picture there, I’m quite sure,” Gavin retorts as he starts scouring through the pictures. He isn’t lying; there are, in fact, two of them, and he proudly presents them to Geoff with a, “see?” 

Geoff takes the two pictures grudgingly and crosses his arms. “That’s not the point and you know it.” 

Gavin desperately feigns innocence. “The point is…?”

“The point is we don’t need a  _single_  picture of Narvaez’s campaign manager, much less a  _stack_  of them,” Geoff says exasperatedly, shoving the stack closer to Gavin. The stack topples from the push, and sure enough, countless pairs of Michael Jones’ eyes are staring at them from the scattered pictures. 

“Unless he suddenly shoots the president or turns into a bear, we don’t need any picture of him, or  _so help me, Gavin_.”

Gavin gives Geoff a grin, a thumb up and not a single promise.

 

+ 

Gavin is drumming his fingers on the table, a steady,  _tap, tap, tap,_  and Michael would’ve fallen asleep if it weren’t for his own voice screaming into his ears from the headphone slung around his neck. 

He’s editing the latest Rage Quit video and Gavin a Let’s Play, and they’re sitting in a companionable silence until Gavin speaks up.

“You know, what if alternate universes exist?”

Michael pauses the video and puts his headphone on the table. “Huh?” 

“You know, alternate universes,” Gavin says, as if talking about alternate universes is a thing people do when they’re working in an office together. “Different world, different time?”

“Like science fiction?”

“Well, yeah, except not really,” Gavin says, pausing his video too and leans back on his chair. “I’m not talking about anything  _drastic_ , you know. Not like, zombie apocalypse kind of alternate universe. 

“I was thinking more of—jobs, you know? Like, maybe in another universe, we’re…  _writers_. I don’t know. For a magazine. Or maybe you write and I take pictures, because I’m always better at that.” His gaze falls onto Michael’s computer screen; the latest Rage Quit, Surgeon Simulator Meet the Medic Update. “Or maybe we’re surgeons! Saving people’s lives one surgery at a time.”

Gavin is smiling and Michael just  _looks_ at him.

“Really, Gavin?” 

“Yeah.”

Michael hits him lightly on the head and turns back to his computer. “You’re an idiot and that was stupid.”

Gavin pouts as he returns back to his own computer. “Was it?”

“Yeah it was.”

Another silence falls. Michael makes some changes to his setting, steals a glance at Gavin still-pouting face, and says, “but that would be, like, super awesome too.”

The pout disappears.

Gavin smiles, the small kind he reserves for Michael, and Michael loves him a little. 

 

+


End file.
